Back to the Office

Yesterday was the first day I went back to the office since before going to St. Louis for the WAC conference.

I made it to the CS building before 11 am, hoping to sit in on a project meeting. Well, it turns out that the PI (principal investigator)decided they wouldn't meet formally over the summer. I suppose this makes sense since so many people are gone for the summer, mostly working in internships at places like Sun and IBM. Actually, as far as I know, no one from that lab is working at IBM now. My mistake there.

Crib Day

I spent the day putting up a crib for my new baby, Marta and moving things around the house to get ready for her to come home. This, of course, means that I haven't had a chance to do any dissertation work since the WAC conference.

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Just Back From the Conference

WAC 04 went well. My panel was well-received and someone told me that she rather liked my paper.

When I got to the car rental place, I was expecting a mid-size car, instead they gave me an SUV. I'm not in love with sport-utes -- lower gas mileage, harder to see when backing up, slower acceleration -- but I did make it to St Louis OK. I stayed at the conference hotel, which was nice enough. When I clicked on the TV I noticed that they have pay per view movies (no VHS or DVD option), including a selection of both blockbusters as well as adult entertainment titles. They seem to have to contradictory messages about the cable options. On the one hand, they let you know that you can easily block the adult titles in case you don't want your four year old to stumble on them by accident; on the other hand, they let you know that, on your bill, movies are never identified by title. It reminded me of the recent book by Eric Schlosser in which he points out that pornography is big business, in part, because it is distributed by all the major hotel chains.

On Friday night, the big conference dinner was held inside the St Louis arch. That was a new one for me.

Getting Ready for the Conference

Today I was taking care of all those last minute details before going to St. Louis for the WAC conference tomorrow. I'll be renting a car from Budget and, naturally, I need a valid driver's license to do this. But, with my daughter's birth, I let my Indiana license expire. So, today I was going to go to the BMV to get an Indiana license. But I missed one too many questions, out of fifty, and have to try again. But on Wednesdays -- that's today -- the BMV closes at 12:30 and does not open again until 830 on Thursday. That means I need to go to the BMV, pass the test and get my license, and then come back to the rental car place before driving to St. Louis.

I'm disappointed.

This past weekend I was at a party

At that party someone asked me about my research and what my project was about. Now, at this point, one should always approach cautiously. I've found that people seem to think that because I am in an English department I should be able to give a facile explanation of what my research is about. Now people in physics or computer science never face this issue. If they meet a non-specialist, then they just can say it's too technical to explain, and that's the end of it. Not so with me. I usually end up making an effort to explain things. Now I know people in my field who make it a point to avoid getting trapped into such situations. One researcher I know, when asked what she does, says she is a professional learner. In her words, "that usually shuts 'em up."

Well, I didn't take that route. And, actually, the conversation was pleasant enough. But I never did communicate to the person -- an engineering professor -- what my current research project is all about. So, here's an attempt.

What My Dissertation Is All About -- in 500 Words or Less

I am looking at what role plays in a research lab in computer science. More specifically, I am following five writers, four second language writers and one native speaker, and seeing what role writing plays in their professional lives. A big part of my project has been collecting their literacy autobiographies, that is, seeing what role writing has played in their lives up to now. Those literacy autobiographies include such things as technologies that relate to writing (paper, pencils, computers, printers, software), attitudes these people have toward writing (easy or hard and why), the role reading plays in their lives, and so on. In addition, I look at how these five people are moving from being graduate students to being independent researchers and what role writing plays in that transition.

This weekend I will be presenting the results of my research with two of these people at the national writing across the curriculum conference . One thing that I have found out is that both of these writers have really struggled with finding an appropriate mentor to supervise their work, and that this is one of the most important things one needs to do early in a PhD program. I have also found out that one of my subjects excels at giving oral explanations of things, but hates writing. As he says, some people think in whole sentences -- I don't. This, as you can imagine, has an effect on the writing has done over his life.

For some reason, perhaps because I used Hello Bot to publish the picture to the web, there was no comments link on the last entry. Hopefully that will change this time. So, add your comments now

Last night we scanned a pictue of Marta on the scanner 

found the book

Yes, after digging through my office for a while I did find Boys in
White and am now about half way through it. With a little persistence,
I can find things I know I have.

Today I submitted a proposal to the graduate student conference at the
upcoming symposium on second language writing this coming October. I
felt pretty good about my effort -- hopefully the reviewers will as
well.

The end of another week. I guess I am getting closer to finishing this
dissertation. Just not anytime soon.

Yesterday I went to a meeting for the learning communities teachers. I'm teaching a section of first year composition for science connections students who have declared a major in computer sciences. Of course, something like 70% of the students are NOT CS majors by the end of the first semester.

Anyway, there's something new about this program this year (I taught in it last year) -- this year there are actually people from the school of science working with me. That's a plus. I'm looking forward to my class in August. My students are going to read Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove, The Odyssey, Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, and they will watch John Ford's The Searchers. Talking with Natalie in the LC office and the teachers I am working with we realized that both my class and the CS class are both about journeys, seeing what's ahead, and about knowing and learning about yourself. As I said, I'm looking forward to the class.

But being in those meetings all day yesterday meant that there was no time for writing or research. And today I am spending the day with my son since he didn't go to preschool today; that means there won't be any work done today either.

Well, tomorrow will be a better day

another experiment

If this works it means that I can successfully publish to my blog via
email. Here's hoping.

Yesterday I was trying to find the book Boys in White in my office. I didn't find it. So, I thought I would find it at home. But, then, when I got home, I looked everywhere and didn't find it. Now I'm thinking it must be at work. You can see there's a problem here.

I really do need to find this book and read it soon so I can move on to the next thing I want to read for my dissertation and knock this literature review out of the way

Not that much progress today because I visited my daughter in the hospital, and I also collected all the final projects from my students today as well. Tomorrow I believe I should have a whole day to make progress on the dissertation and research. Squeezing the WAC conference paper into 15 minutes is a big priority.

Today was the first day in a long time that I had several hours without having to teach, go to a meeting, or pick my son up from preschool. Having all that time, what did I do? Mostly I worked on activities for an upcoming conference. I reserved my hotel room, I reserved my rental car, and I started working on editing my presentation. Yesterday I found out that I only get 15 minutes to present, and, the last time I presented the results of this research, it took me 35 minutes to finish. So, my goal is to take my 16 page script and cut it down to 7 pages. I think I might have reduced it to 12 pages, but we'll see.